Incumbent San Francisco mayor faces uphill battle

San Francisco Mayor London Breed is in a fight for her political life as several well-funded challengers seek to unseat her and reverse the course of a city that many, including a majority of San Franciscans, say is on the wrong track.

Breed, who took office in 2018 after winning a special election following the unexpected death of Mayor Ed Lee from a heart attack, vowed in her inauguration speech to help drug users and the homeless, and to build more housing.

But her tenure has been rocked by the very issues she promised to address. High property crime, record-setting drug overdoses, tent encampments, a lack of affordable housing and a downtown that has yet to recover from the COVID-19 pandemic are among the criticisms lobbed at Breed by her opponents in the mayoral race.

Breed, San Francisco’s first Black female mayor, faces nine challengers. They will compete under the city’s ranked choice voting system. Recent polling indicates that Breed is in a tight race with San Francisco Board of Supervisors President Aaron Peskin; Daniel Lurie, a philanthropist and heir to the Levi Strauss fortune who founded the antipoverty nonprofit Tipping Point Community; and former Acting Mayor and Supervisor Mark Farrell.

Breed is also facing a notable challenge from Supervisor Ahsha Safai. The San Francisco Democratic Party endorsed Breed for reelection, while the influential San Francisco Chronicle editorial board endorsed Lurie.

As the race has entered its closing stages, the main contenders have engaged in some old-fashioned political mudslinging. Lurie, who has largely self-funded his campaign and cast himself as an outsider who can solve some of the city’s deep-rooted issues, has accused both Breed and Farrell of “corruption,” with the latter being accused of unethical use of campaign finance and pressuring Breed to expedite permits to remodel his home.

Breed, meanwhile, put her appointed head of the Human Rights Commission on leave after news emerged that the department head had directed several contracts worth over six figures to a nonprofit led by a man she lives with. Spokespeople for Breed did not respond to requests for comment.

“What happened is that our elected leaders forgot who, and why, they are there,” Lurie said in an interview with Route Fifty. “They've forgotten that they are there to serve the public.”

For his part, Farrell said the campaign cycle has entered “silly season,” and that he expected better from his opponents.

“Everything they're trying to say is a distraction from the main issues in the race, where they are all failing,” he told Route Fifty. “To me, we need to continue to focus on the core issues of experience, competence and a strong vision for the future of San Francisco. … They're trying to distract from the real issues at hand.”

One of those real issues is public safety. Breed’s campaign website says San Francisco “can and should be the safest large city in America,” but like many cities it is enduring a police staffing “crisis.” Breed blames that crisis on the national reckoning around policing and race after the 2020 murder of George Floyd, but Lurie and Farrell argue it is her fault and say she is to blame for poor morale among the city’s public safety agencies.

Lurie is proposing a co-responder model with trained mental health counselors as the “first point of contact” for people who are struggling with addiction or mental health issues, not the police. He said he wants more officers out walking the beat in their communities, and that by using subsidies for housing, child care and continuing education, the city could recruit more than 400 officers in the first three years of his administration.

Farrell said he would look to hire a new police chief and appoint new police commissioners, as well as funding five police academies a year to train new recruits, which would be more than is currently offered.

San Francisco’s ongoing battle with its lack of affordable housing is also a major issue in the campaign. Breed said the city’s “inability or unwillingness” to build enough housing has led to a raft of problems, including high rents and home prices, homelessness, and families leaving the city for more affordable areas. Breed reiterated that she would veto any piece of “anti-housing legislation.”

She said her Housing for All plan, a strategy that combines governmental, administrative and legislative actions to help the city meet the state’s goal of 82,000 new homes built in the next eight years, would move the city in the right direction. Together with that, Breed’s website said revitalizing downtown will be key, including by offering tax incentives to new businesses, encouraging old offices to become homes, and getting rid of any other barriers that have stood in the way.

But so far, it’s not been enough, according to her opponents. Farrell said the city is way behind on its home building targets and needs to “get aggressive” with tax incentives and zoning, including in allowing even more vacant buildings to become residences. 

“Across the board, I'm done with ideology inside of City Hall,” he said. “NIMBY, progressive, moderate. Throw it all out the window. We need a mayor who is going to focus on results. Just get things done right away, make a change, really impact the residents of San Francisco in a positive way.”

Lurie said entrenched bureaucracy is killing the ability of businesses to open and for houses to get built. And he said his opponents, who all have extensive experience within municipal government, are not the ones to clear it out of the way.

“They have a combined total of 70 years inside that building,” he said. “They are not the ones that can fix it. They have built this system, they've exploited it, and now they're trying to tell everybody they're the only ones that can fix it. What we need is to turn the page.”

While Breed is keen to defend her record as mayor, which she said has included doubling drug arrests, using tax breaks to attract new downtown businesses, helping more than 15,000 people exit homelessness and increasing shelter capacity, both Lurie and Farrell pledged to be more accountable.

Farrell unveiled an ambitious agenda for his first 100 days in office to deal with a host of issues, as he said it is important to “come in and hit the ground running, to start to make a difference in San Franciscans’ lives right away.”

Lurie, meanwhile, pledged to hold weekly meetings of all his department heads—which he said does not happen currently—where they can “communicate, collaborate and cooperate to get things done.” He said he will expect results from all his agency leaders, and if those results do not come, he pledged to find alternative heads.

“We need to hold each other accountable again,” Lurie said. “It just has not been done for a long time.”